He drive to Anacostia the next morning was as uneventful as before, a careful swing southeast through the back streets, toward the sun and the crisp sentries’ uniforms. When the black officer’s car slid through the gates, barely pausing for its badge check, it seemed to melt into the lot in the slow motion of a dream. Navy whites. A few official cars. What did he do here? Nick watched his dark face move toward the building, unhurried. He decided to take a chance on the guard.
“That guy who just came in? I think he put a dent on my car.”
“Lieutenant Williams?” the guard said, amazed.
“I guess. How do I get in touch with him?”
“You can’t. Not without a pass.”
“You have an extension? I just want to call, for the insurance.”
The guard checked a clipboard. “5207,” he said. “Big dent?”
“No, just a scratch. Thanks.”
Nick pulled away, the guard not even bothering to look at the car, turning his face to the sun. The whole base was dozing, far away from the war.
The Senate Office Building, on the other hand, bristled like a command post, phones ringing, secretaries’ heels clicking along the halls, busy with itself. Nick dialed the Anacostia number from a pay phone in the lobby. A girl’s voice. “Naval intelligence.” Nick put the receiver back, nodding to himself, and went to find Welles’s office.
There were two secretaries, both with beehive hairdos, both wrapped in sweaters against the air conditioning. A leather couch, piled with unopened mail, the walls filled with photographs of Welles shaking hands with everybody in the world. A portrait of Nixon. A framed campaign poster. Peace With Honor. Nick heard voices coming from the inside office, laughter.
Now that he was here, he felt a quiet panic at the ordinariness of it all, that the demon swirling through years of his imaginative life would be reduced to a man making jokes in an office, harmless, like a funhouse ride after the doors open. Welles belonged in the newsreel, gavel banging, cowing them into silence, always oversize, his malevolence so large it needed an expanse of screen or it would become invisible, too large to be seen in a small room with posters and crank mail. His father had said that when you shook hands with Stalin, the act itself was a violation of scale, allowing you to believe he was just a man.
The inner door swung open. No longer screen-size but still large, grown fat, his bulk filling the door frame. Everything the same, the straight nose and square face softened by the years of extra flesh. He was wearing a bow tie and red-white-and-blue suspenders, sweating a little in the cool room. His arms were draped around a middle-aged couple whose faces had the pleased look of pilgrims granted an audience. When he saw Nick, his smile froze for a second, then spread back across his face.
“Well, there he is. Looks like Betty’s got them back-to-back this morning. I swear, they don’t give me time to pee sometimes.” Genial, for the benefit of the couple, who smiled. “Now, bless your heart, you tell the club I wouldn’t miss it. Wouldn’t miss it. You just make sure Betty here has that date.” He turned to one of the secretaries. “Darlin‘, you circle this one now, hear?” Then, to Nick, “Well, come on in if you’re coming.” And then a flurry of goodbyes and Nick suddenly felt himself being led into the room by a hand on his shoulder, everything smaller after all.
“Well, I was surprised. Your call. But you know, your dad-Larry and I go back a ways, both sides of the aisle, so I guess I owe him a favor or two. Hell, I owe everybody favors. Now, what’s so important he couldn’t call himself? They got phones in Paris last time I heard.” Before Nick could reply, he held up his hand. “Let me tell you up front, if it’s this peace talk business he’s got himself into, I can’t do it. No help at all. The people don’t want it-they’d have themselves a lynching party with me in the rope. And I don’t blame them. Peace with honor,” he said, last year’s slogan for war. “That’s what we’re looking for here. Now, Larry knows that. Hell, that was the whole campaign. Can’t have him giving everything away over there. We’ve been there before. All our fine boys getting shot up and we’re just going to hand it to the Commies? Another Yalta? No, sir.” His cheeks puffed now, like bellows. Everything the same.
“He didn’t send me. I wanted to see you myself.”
Welles stopped, surprised. “You did,” he said, marking time, not sure what was happening. “Well, what can I do for you?”
“Larry’s my stepfather. You know my real father was Walter Kotlar.”
A tic of recognition, not alarm, a reflex to a surprise question. “That’s right. Larry married the wife. I never did understand that. There was a kid.” Just a detail, lost over the years. “That’s you?”
Nick nodded.
“Walter Kotlar,” Welles said, sitting against the edge of the desk. “A lot of water over that dam.”
“He died last week.”
“Died? Well, that’s something,” he said slowly. “Dead. I’m sorry to hear that.” He caught Nick’s expression. “Oh, he was no friend of mine. Matter of fact, he was anything but for a while there. No end of trouble. Whole thing just folded up on me. But dead-” He shook his head. “You know, it’s not just your friends. Makes you feel old when the other ones go too. Maybe more. Nobody left who knows the war stories. Kids don’t want to hear it.”
“I do.”
Welles lifted his head. “No, you don’t. There’s no percentage in that. Scratching sores, that’s all that is-you’re better off letting them alone. It don’t pay, staying mad. Your dad, he almost put me out of business. Terrible, him and that woman. But what are you going to do? You pick yourself up and roll with it. You don’t want to look back. That’s what’s great about this country-you just go on to the next thing.”
Nick looked at him, amazed. Just something that had happened to him. Was it possible it had never really mattered, the whole thing no more important than a hitch in the campaign, patched over with a booster’s platitude? Or was this just another way of telling Betty to circle the date, a hand on your shoulder on your way out the door.
“My parents never talked about it.”
“Well, that’s right. They wouldn’t.” He peered at Nick. “So you came to see me, is that it? It’s all there, you know. Matter of record.”
“Not all of it.”
Welles gave him a serious look, on guard.
“Look,” Nick said, “my father’s dead. It can’t hurt anybody anymore. It’s history. I’d just like to know, to fill in the gaps.”
Improbably, this made him smile. “History. Well, I guess it is now. We did make some history there, didn’t we? He did, anyways. What do you want to know?”
“Did Rosemary Cochrane really have new testimony, the way you announced? Did she tell you anything?”
This was clearly unexpected. “She would have,” he said, with a sly glance back.
“But she didn’t.”
Welles frowned. “Now look, I’m not raking this up again. They all said I drove her to it, but that’s b.s. I didn’t drive her to nothing. You had to know how to handle her-you needed a little pressure if you were going to get anything out of her. In the beginning, you know, when she told me about your father, I have to say I scared her into it-had to, wouldn’t have got anywhere otherwise. She knew she had to give me something. Then she just clammed up again. My opinion? Her friends got to her. God knows with what-probably scared her worse. But she still knew plenty. Thing was, how do you get her to open up? You had to turn the heat on somehow. Hell, that’s just politics. You’re from a political family, you ought to know that. You tell the papers she’s already confessed, she’s not going to have her friends to fall back on. Can’t trust her. They’re running for cover. She’s out there all alone. Maybe facing perjury, if you play it right. And she didn’t want to go to prison in the worst way.”
“She was pregnant.”
Welles looked at him, stunned. “How do you-” A sputter, like a candle.
Nick didn’t wait but slipped in under the confusion. “Look, I never said you drove her to it. I just want to know what she said. After Hoover told you to talk to her, did she mention my father right away?”
Welles missed it. “I told you, with her it was always pressure. She knew she had to give me a name.”
“Or you’d go after her.”
“Of course. What else?”
“By the way, how did Hoover know?” Nick said, trying to sound casual.
“How does he know anything? You don’t ask.”
“But she didn’t mention anyone else,” Nick said, moving away from it. Hoover.
“No, just Kotlar.”
“And she thought that was the end of it.”
“I don’t know what she thought. How could it be the end?”
“But you offered immunity.”
“From espionage charges,” he said carefully.
“Which you couldn’t prove anyway. Without bringing the Bureau into it.”
Another sly look, nodding. “That was the tricky part. But she bit. She thought we could. You know, she was guilty. There’s no doubt about that.”
“No.”
“And after she gave me a name, well, then I had her.” He smiled, then looked down, troubled. “How do you know she was pregnant?”
“She told her family. It never came out.”
“I didn’t know that. It explains a lot. Why she’d be so upset. To take her own life.” Welles shook his head.
“If she did.”
He peered at Nick, alert. “What’s all this about?”
“I always wondered,” Nick said flatly. “If he killed her.”
“Killed her?” Welles said, surprised. “Now, don’t you start thinking that way.” He raised a finger. “He was your father,” he said, as sanctimonious as his peace platform.
Nick shrugged. “It’s possible. You must have wondered. There were a lot of people in the hotel. Anybody could have gone up and- Well, couldn’t they? I mean, you were there at the time.”
“Yes, I was,” he said slowly. “With Mrs Welles.” Only his name on the list.
“But you weren’t married,” Nick said involuntarily. Two glasses.
“We married later,” Welles said evenly. “She was my date.”
Nick tried an apologetic grin. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t asking for an alibi.”
“I don’t care what you’re asking for. Your time’s up.” Welles glanced at his watch, physical evidence, then stood up. “Let me give you a piece of advice. Don’t be like your father, going off half cocked. That woman was probably crazy, I don’t know. You have to work with what you’ve got. What I do know is, it’s over and done with. You’d best put your mind at ease and get on. You don’t want to go digging around the past-there’s no percentage in it. I’ve lived a long time in this town and I learned. There’s only the next thing. There isn’t any past here. You let your father be.”
Nick nodded, message received, then glanced up at his eyes, now the same hard eyes that had peered over the microphones.
“When you looked at him,” he said, “at the hearing, what were you thinking?”
Welles stopped, framing an answer. “That he was the smoothest goddamned liar I’d ever seen. That I’d never get him.”
“Maybe it takes one to know one.”
Instead of taking offense, Welles smiled. “Maybe it does, at that.”
“Thanks,” Nick said, taking his hand, wanting to see how it felt. Small. Welles raised his eyebrows. “For your time. For telling me what I wanted to know.”
But Welles misinterpreted. “It’s true. Never thought I’d get him. And I knew he was guilty.”
“What about all the others?”
“The others?” All forgotten, like campaign workers.
“The ones who weren’t guilty.”
“Well, they must have been guilty of something,” Welles said easily, “or they wouldn’t have been there.” Attending meetings. Running mimeograph machines. Flubbing loyalty checks. Thousands. Welles put his hand on Nick’s shoulder and smiled. “You know, son, you don’t know shit about politics. You should just get on to the next thing.”
Welles walked him to the door, taking a deep breath and drawing up his shoulders, ready for a new meeting. As Nick watched, the buffoon suspenders seemed to expand, his body filling back up with air, almost newsreel size.
The break came the next day. Molly took the vigil in Chevy Chase again, and Nick decided, as if he were sticking a pin in a map, to follow Irina. He drove to Dupont Circle, and by seven A.M. he was waiting halfway down her sunny street, thinking that the whole random exercise was futile. They needed five watchers, not two. He imagined the contact being made-an exchange on a park bench? How was it done? — while they were both somewhere else, never in the right place at the right time. In this lottery, Silver’s luck could hold forever while Nick drew empty mornings of delivery vans and dog-walkers. Anyway, where was she? She’d be late for work if she didn’t leave the house soon. Nick stared at her door, so preoccupied he didn’t hear the steps behind him, stopping at his open window.
“There you are.” A woman’s voice. “I suppose I have you to thank.”
Mrs Baylor, carrying a brown grocery bag. Nick looked up blankly.
“I thought she’d be someone you’d want. Why send her back, if you don’t mind my asking? Was something wrong?”
“You mean she’s gone?” First Brown, now Irina.
Well, don’t you know?“
Nick shook his head, confused.
“Oh. Of course, she did say it was temporary, but she seemed to like it here.”
“When did she leave?”
“Yesterday. Said she found something better. I don’t know what she means by better. There’s nothing wrong with the apartment. It’s self-contained. I thought you people sent her home.”
“No, nothing like that. Did she leave an address? They’re supposed to.”
“No. Of course, they come and go, the girls. But one month? No more for me, I can tell you, no more foreigners. Not that she wasn’t nice.”
“She was only here a month?” Could the list have been that recent? But his father must have had it earlier, when he had first planned to leave.
“One month. Hardly worth the time it takes to clean the place. Flighty.” Mrs Baylor’s arm shot up in the air, waving. “There’s Barbara.”
Nick looked toward the house, where a girl on the stoop was waving back. His eyes stopped, and he felt a tingling along his scalp. Not the Russian, the other girl. She started down the street.
“Thanks, Mrs Baylor. Sorry for your trouble. She’ll probably check in with us this week, when she’s settled. If she does send an address, let us know, okay? Just in case.” He turned on the ignition. “By the way, how did she find you? She give you references?”
“Well, I never thought to ask. Barbara told her about it. They met at work, I guess. Not that I blame Barbara. She was good as gold about those records.”
By the time Nick was able to pull away, the girl had turned the corner into the next block, shoulder bag swinging. A miniskirt, short heels, blond like Molly. Reliable Barbara, who’d met Irina at work. But she was heading downtown, away from the embassy.
Nick followed slowly, but even at this pace the car was bound to overtake her. She passed a bus stop, clearly intending to walk. He went through the light into the next block, keeping her in his rearview mirror. A car pulling away from the curb. He slammed on the brakes and backed into the spot, adjusting the parking angle until she went by. When he started down the sidewalk he kept his eyes on her hair, a tracking beam, so that everything around her blurred out of focus.
She was walking quickly, not stopping to look at windows, heading toward Farragut Square. She took a diagonal path across the park, unaware of Nick in the crowd. Downtown. The Bureau wasn’t far away. Then she went into a coffee shop, forcing Nick to stop at the corner, exposed. He fed some coins into a newspaper vending machine and took out a Post. A peace rally. District police requesting additional crowd-control units. People streamed by, carrying briefcases. What if she was just a boarder after all? But the address had been there, on the list.
When she came out, sipping from a Styrofoam cup, Nick turned away and almost lost her. Then, in front of a DON’T WALK sign, the blond hair came into view again. She crossed the street and disappeared through a door: EMPLOYEES ONLY. Nick looked around, then at the block-long row of plate-glass windows, trying to orient himself. It was only when he stepped back to the curb, taking the whole building in, that he finally recognized it, as familiar to him as an old dream. Garfinkel’s. Still. His father had said the reports never changed, the same pattern. You could tell just by the prose. One of them will lead me to him.
Nick went through the door. Don’t show yourself. But how else could he be sure? He walked past aisles of cosmetics and women’s handbags. She could be anybody. But when he reached the men’s department, there she was, just arrived behind the counter, talking to another clerk as she arranged the tie display, the shelves behind her lined with row after row of white shirts.
“We have to figure out a way to get in there,” Nick said later, excited. “I can’t spend all day trying on suits.”
They were in the lobby bar at the Madison, the soft spring light still flooding into the windows from 16th Street, not yet evening. Molly, unexpectedly subdued, picked out a cashew from the bowl of nuts.
“You want me to be her,” she said, not looking up.
“No, he probably knows her by sight. But if you were there. They’re always looking for extra help. You could talk your way in. Anyway, it’s worth a try.”
“No, I meant her. Rosemary. You want me to be her.”
Nick said nothing, surprised at her mood.
“Do I have to?”
“Molly, we’re so close.”
She nodded and looked out the window. In the corner, a man in black tie was playing the piano. Cocktail hour. These Foolish Things‘, one of the songs his mother must have danced to.
“It’s funny,” she said. “All my life, my mother kept telling me I was like her. Political. That’s what she said when I wanted to go to Kennedy’s funeral. A whole bus went down from school. You don’t want to get mixed up in anything, not like her. God. Every time I brought someone home. You’ll turn out boy-crazy, just like-” She broke off. “But I never thought I was. I didn’t even know her. That was just my mother. Half the time I didn’t know what she was talking about. Now it turns out maybe she was right. I am like her. I know just how she felt.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she did it for him, didn’t she? Mr Right. Anything, right up to the end. New dress. Order up a bottle-I’ll bet it was the kind he liked. Everything was going to be all right.”
“Everything is going to be all right.”
A weak smile, ignoring him. “And now I’m going to be her, do everything she did. Even sell the shirts.”
“Molly, if it bothers you, don’t do it. We’ll figure out something else.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll do it.” She paused. “I am like her. I’ll do it for you.”
“No. Do it for her.”
She sighed. “She’s dead, Nick.” She turned from the window. “I’ll do it for you. So you’ll be finished with it.”
“We’re so close,” he said again. “What do you want to do, walk away from it? I need to do this for him.”
Another wry smile, looking down at the nuts.
“What?” Nick said, annoyed.
“Not for him,” she said. “Don’t you know that?” She raised her hand, stopping his response. “It’s okay. I want you to bury him. But how do you end it, Nick? What are you going to do if this works, if you do get Silver? Have you thought about it?”
Nick looked down, embarrassed because he hadn’t. It had seemed enough to know, to see a face. “This one we turn in,” he said finally.
“But not the others.”
“He’s a murderer.”
“Maybe they are too.”
“And maybe they just sell shirts. Would you have turned Rosemary in?”
She shrugged, shying away. “I guess not. I don’t know.”
“Molly, what’s wrong?” he said, touching her arm. “What are you so worried about?”
“You’re just so determined.”
“We’re going to get him.”
“Then what? Push him over a balcony? Nick, let’s just give the whole thing to the FBI now. Let them do it.”
Nick took a drink, calming himself, so that when he spoke his voice was steady and reasonable. “Molly, for all we know it is the FBI.”
“You just want to do it yourself.”
“Yes,” he said, still calm. “I want to do it myself. I want to see his face.” A beat. “Then it’ll be over.”
“Will it?”
He held her eyes, sure. “Yes.”
She glanced out the window, avoiding him, then busied herself lighting a cigarette. She exhaled, then nodded. “When do I go to work?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Selling seashells by the shore,” she said. “Let’s hope I don’t end up the same way she did.” Then, before he could answer, “And just when I was getting somewhere with Mr Brown.”
“What do you mean? I thought you said he wasn’t there.”
“He wasn’t. But there’s another thing, if you had let me finish. I took a drive over to the parking lot at National-that’s where you said he left the car, right? Well, it wasn’t there. So what is he up to?”
Nick thought for a minute, then frowned. “It doesn’t matter. It isn’t him.”
“But funny, don’t you think?”
“We don’t have time. She’s the only one who matters now.”
“Well, you have to do something while I’m playing salesgirl. Why not find out? Unless you want to protect him from the FBI. One of your innocent spies.”
“What are you talking about?”
“See the guy at the end of the driveway? He’s been keeping an eye on us.”
Nick looked out the window. “You’re sure?”
“I’ve developed this instinct-in my new professional capacity,” she said airily, then nodded. “Pretty sure.”
“He follow you here?”
“No. At least, I don’t think so. I just noticed him while we were talking. I told you Lapierre would have them put a tail on us.”
“Then he’s interested in me. Good. We can’t have anyone walking you to work.”
“Take the car out tomorrow and see.”
“Damn. Why now?” Nick said, worried. “What do they want?”
“Like old times, isn’t it?” Molly said, her eyes back at the window.
“We have to get rid of them.”
“The FBI?”
“Hoover can.”
She glanced back, amused. “That would do it.” Then, seeing he meant it, “Right to the top. Larry’s name again?”
“No.” He smiled. “I thought I’d use Jeff’s.”
But he didn’t have to use either name: Hoover sent for him.
He drove out to National in the morning, avoiding Chevy Chase, his eyes almost fixed on the rearview mirror, but the tail, if it was there, had been trained in a better school than Zimmerman’s-he seemed to be alone. He went slowly through the parking lot. No car. Had someone taken it? A day ago he would have felt uneasy; now it was only a piece of a different puzzle.
He took the direct route home, then doubled back across the Mall, where they were putting up a stage for the peace rally. Still no obvious tail. Then, at the hotel, he saw they hadn’t bothered. The two men approached him in the lobby, said the boss wanted to see him, and led him to the car. When they hustled him into the back seat with a peremptory shove, he was at Holeckova again, the same helpless anxiety, his palms damp, as if he were back in handcuffs.
The office, a suite of rooms, was on the fifth floor of the Justice Department, past a secretarial pool and a corridor lined with autographed pictures and plaques and framed awards, the tokens of a grateful nation. The visitors’ office made Welles’s look like a closet: a huge room with an oversize desk between two flags, whose only purpose seemed to be for taking pictures. A vast blue rug with the Bureau seal. A ghoulish death mask, mounted-Dillinger, 1934. More photographs, all of them with Hoover. Burly, in a double-breasted suit and crisp fedora, leading a fugitive up the stairs. Bending over to shake hands with Shirley Temple.
Nick’s escorts knocked on the inner office door, nodded to the prim woman in a high collar who opened it, and backed away, like courtiers. One more large room, with windows looking out over Pennsylvania Avenue, this one for working-a line of wooden memo trays, another football-field desk, with telephones and a single open file. Standing behind the desk was the director himself, bulldog jaw sticking out just like it did in his pictures, glowering up at Nick with a theatrical intensity. A silence.
“Am I under arrest?” Nick said.
“No. I want to talk to you,” Hoover said, the words coming as fast as bullets. Nick wondered if he had worked on it, practicing in front of a mirror until speech too had become an intimidating prop. “I hear you want to talk to me. If you don’t, you can leave right now. I’m a busy man. Thank you, Miss Gandy,” he said to the secretary, so that, ironically, the next sound Nick heard was the door clicking shut behind him.
“Now we could start friendly, but I haven’t got the time. Nobody bothers my agents, Mr Warren. Nobody. Interrogating them. Who do you think you are? Of course I know who you are.” He tapped the open file with his finger. “The only reason I’m talking to you at all is that your father’s been a friend to the Bureau.” Nick realized after a second of confusion that in Washington he was always Larry’s son first. “Sometimes. Depending. But I don’t hold grudges, and the Bureau takes care of its friends.”
“I’ll bet.”
Hoover jerked his round head and stared at Nick. “Don’t do that again,” he said evenly. “Talk smart to your father. Maybe he’s used to it. I don’t like it. As far as I’m concerned, you’re just some kid who thinks he’s having fun with the Bureau, and that’s not smart. Ask your father, he’ll tell you.”
“He’s my stepfather.”
“I know that too. I know everything about you.” He touched the file again. “War record. Not much, but at least you weren’t one of the dodgers. I’m not surprised you changed your name. We can’t help our parents-I don’t hold that against you. Maybe I should. They usually don’t fall far from the tree. But right now I just want to know what you think you’re doing. Talking to Lapierre, playing cute with us in New York.”
“I wasn’t trying to play cute. I just left early. They weren’t there around the clock.”
“You’re not worth twenty-four-hour surveillance,” Hoover said. “You’re not that important.”
“I’m not that important now, either. So call off the guys you have watching me here. I haven’t done anything. If there’s something you want to know, ask and I’ll tell you. I don’t like being followed. I had enough of that in Prague. But you expect it there. I didn’t think we were like that yet.”
Hoover peered at him curiously, sizing him up, then moved out from behind the desk. Involuntarily Nick glanced down to see if his shoes had lifts. Hoover had always been described as short, but here, on his carefully constructed set, the sight lines seemed to exaggerate his bulk, and the broad shoulders and thick neck gave the impression of a large man barely contained by his suit. What caught Nick’s eye, however, was the hair, short but still dark, at his age a color that could only have come from a bottle. Nick wondered if he did it himself, towel wrapped around his neck at the mirror, or if a barber had been sworn to secrecy.
“Not yet, Mr Warren. And we’re not going to be. We’ve still got a free country here, no thanks to people like Walter Kotlar. Why did you go see him?”
“Because he asked me to. Look, you’re busy-let me make this easy for you. He sent a message that he wanted to see me. I went. I spent a few days with him and his wife. He didn’t tell me any state secrets and he didn’t tell me about the old days. He did tell me that he was sick and he’d like to come home. One of your people there-a legat, isn’t that what you call them?”
Hoover nodded almost imperceptibly.
“A legat found out about it and ran with it, all the way back to the Bureau, where they started ringing bells so loud even you heard them. Is that about right so far? But he didn’t come back. He killed himself. I found him. The Czech police thought I did it, or caused it somehow, or whatever. Who knows what they think? I wasn’t going to hang around to find out. I got out as fast as I could, only to come home and get the same treatment from you. Which I would like you to stop.”
Hoover looked at him for a moment. “I know all that,” he said finally. That doesn’t tell me anything.“
“What do you want to know?”
“Why he thought he could come back.”
“I don’t know that he did think it. He just said he wanted to.” Nick paused. “He didn’t know you had the lighter.”
Hoover said nothing, stone-faced.
“I’d like it back, by the way. It’s mine now. It’s not evidence anymore. He’s dead.”
“You’re talking about Bureau property.”
“No, I’m not. The Bureau doesn’t officially have it. You do. You’ve always had it. In one of your special files. Just in case. But you can’t get him anymore. He got away again.”
“You think you know all about it.”
“No. Just that it was you. All along. You fed Welles. You fed McCarthy. That was your little war. Years of it.”
“You think it wasn’t a war? You’re too young to know, all of you. The only reason you’re walking around free today is-” He stopped. “It was a war. And we won it.”
“Well, you did anyway. You’re still here.” Hoover glared at him. “And so is the lighter. The one time you really had somebody and he slipped through your fingers. But at least you could always get him for something he didn’t do-if he came back.”
“He did do it.”
“Your agents don’t think so. Neither did the police.”
Hoover looked at him steadily, his voice low. “But I did. Naturally you don’t want to.”
“It doesn’t matter what we think anymore, does it?”
“Then why are you bothering Lapierre? Nosing around where you don’t belong? What are you really doing in Washington?”
“Research. Not your kind. History, that’s what it is now. It’s important to talk to who was there while they’re still around.”
Hoover’s eyes widened as if he’d been personally insulted. “Research,” he said sarcastically. “For who? That pink in London you’ve been working with?”
“Yes, that pink.”
He snorted. “Not far from the tree. Well, not with my agents, you’re not. Don’t expect any help from this office. And keep the Bureau out of it.” Hoover held up a finger. “I mean that. I’m not interested in history.”
And Nick saw suddenly that it was true, that all the stagecraft was there not to trick the future but to keep things going now, attorney general after attorney general, Hoover still at the desk. The only idea he’d ever had was to hold on to his job.
“Then it won’t matter,” he said.
“You know,” Hoover said, more slowly now, “a lot of people come into this office just set on showing me they’re not afraid of me. It’s a thing I’ve noticed. Smart talk. They don’t leave that way.”
“How do they leave?”
“With a little respect for this office and what we’re doing. They find it’s better to be a friend of the Bureau.” The eyes so hard that Nick had to look away.
“Would you tell me something?” he said.
“For your research?” Almost spitting it.
“No, for me. Just one thing. It can’t possibly matter to you anymore.”
Hoover looked up, intrigued.
“Who told you about Rosemary Cochrane? You told Welles, but someone told you.”
“What makes you think I told Welles?”
“Because he told me you did. He didn’t intend to, but he told me.”
Hoover twitched, annoyed. “Well, that’s not what I would call a reliable source. Ken doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain. Never did. Did a lousy job with your father, too.”
“Despite all the help.”
Hoover said nothing.
“You knew about her. How? It can’t matter anymore.”
“It always matters. That’s Bureau business. We never divulge sources-wouldn’t have them, otherwise.” He paused. “But in this case, since it matters to you.” He glanced up. “It was an anonymous tip. A good one, for a change. We never knew who.”
“Yes, you did,” Nick said.
“You’re sure about that,” Hoover said, toying with him.
“Yes.”
Hoover glanced away. “I don’t remember.”
Nick stood, waiting.
“I don’t think you understand how things work here,” Hoover said, looking back at Nick. “Information, that’s like currency to us. We don’t spend it. We don’t trade for it.”
“Yes, you do.”
For the first time there was a trace of a smile. “But you see, you’re not a friend of the Bureau’s.”
Nick stared at him, stymied.
“Now I’ll ask you something,” Hoover said. “Why you? All those years, and you’re the one he sends for, says he wants to come home. Why not just go to our people in the embassy?”
“Would you trust them? Every embassy has informers. If the Russians had found out-”
“Well, they did, didn’t they?” A shot in the dark.
“If they did, Mr Hoover, then they got it from you. Only the Bureau knew. Is that what you think happened, a leak in the Bureau?”
“No, I do not,” he said, steel again. “We don’t have leaks.”
“You must have had one once. My father had his file.”
Hoover frowned. “Lapierre said you’d seen that,” he said, diverted now to the office mystery. Another witch-hunt, irresistible.
“But he might have got it a while ago. Actually, I never thought the Russians did know. But if they did, that means-”
“I know what it means. And that never occurred to you.”
“No. I thought he committed suicide.”
“With you there? He makes you go to Czechoslovakia so he can kill himself while you’re around.”
“People who commit suicide don’t always make a lot of sense.”
Hoover looked at him, then turned to the window, pretending to be disappointed. “I don’t think you do either,” he said, looking down at Pennsylvania Avenue. “Don’t have too much fun at our expense-it’s not worth it. I’ve been here a long, long time. And I knew your father. I studied your father. You want me to think it was just a pipe dream. Our man didn’t think so. Some pipe dream. Your father knew how things worked. If he wanted to come back, he knew he’d have to buy his way back. But what was he going to buy it with? You’d need a lot of currency to do that.” He turned back and stared at Nick. “And somebody to make the deal. Close, like family.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nick said, holding his gaze.
“I hate to see good information go to waste, get in the wrong hands. Hate it.” He paused. “Most people find that it makes sense to be a friend to the Bureau.”
“I can’t afford it. It’s too expensive.”
Hoover nodded and moved toward the table behind the desk. “There’s all kinds of information,” he said, and pressed a button on a tape recorder. Nick heard a scratch, then his voice, Molly’s.
“Here’s an idea. Let’s smoke a joint and make love. All night. No microphones.”
“I liked the microphones. Where’d you get the stuff?”
“Well, I did see Richie.”
Hoover clicked it off and looked at him for a reaction.
Not the Alcron, looking up at ceilings. The Plaza, where they were safe.
“Where was the bug?” Nick said, stalling.
“The phone.”
“You can’t use it.”
“No? For two cents I’d set you up, you and your hippie girlfriend. I can do it. For two cents.”
Nick stared at him, the bantam chest and dyed hair, his eyes shining, about to win. The way it worked. “But you won’t,” he said finally. “You can’t afford it either. Larry Warren’s a friend to the Bureau.”
Nick saw the tic, the flesh of Hoover’s cheek quivering as if he’d been slapped.
“Two cents,” Hoover said, machine gun speed again, trying to recover. But the air had gone out of it, his skin now slack with age.
Nick turned away. “Keep it with the lighter, just in case. Can I go now?”
“Think about what I said. Hard. Maybe something will come back to you.”
Nick walked toward the door.
“Don’t push your luck,” Hoover said, wanting the last word. “Not with me. I hear you had a rough time over there. You might learn something from that. How things are.”
Nick turned from the knob and looked at Hoover. “I did learn something. You know, when I walked in here I was afraid of you. The Boss. You want some history? That was Stalin’s nickname too. Just like you. But you’re not that scary. You’re just a guy who likes to go through people’s wastebaskets.” Hoover’s face went blank, amazed. “You know what I learned? Nothing is forever. You think you are. You’re going to be disappointed.”
For a moment Hoover just stood there, seeming paralyzed by the impertinence, then his eyes narrowed. “You’ll change your mind. They always do. It’s better to be a friend.” He walked back toward his desk, pulling himself together. “So I’ll give you something free. As a friend. The Bureau isn’t following you. Maybe we should be, but we’re not. And maybe you’re not as smart as you think you are. Just a little paranoid.”
“Maybe.”
“You see how it works. Now you give me one. I know he talked to you. How else would you know about the lighter?”
Nick smiled and opened the door. “An anonymous tip.”
He walked over to the Mall and sat on a bench watching them build the scaffolding for the rally. Kids in T-shirts and Jesus hair with hammers. Portable toilets. In a few days the buses would pour in. Speeches and peace balloons. All of it happening somewhere else, in the present, while he waited to find someone in the past. Hoover hadn’t dyed his hair then. He’d been a real monster, not a creaky vaudeville turn, hanging on. He’d made Welles, McCarthy, Nixon, all of them. Passing out his currency. Now some were dead and one was in the White House and everyone had moved on to the next thing. Except Nick.
He noticed some men in suits loitering by the construction site. The Bureau, getting ready? He should get up and go home. Which was where? A hotel with a piano player in the lobby. A room in London he couldn’t even remember. He looked up toward Capitol Hill. That wasn’t home either. But he was still living there, on 2nd Street, trying to find his way out. The trouble with history, his father had said, is that you have to live through it. A crime story where everyone did it, without even thinking, as careless as an anonymous tip. And then went on. But what if it stopped, a freeze frame? What if you were the one caught in the picture? Stuck-unless you found the one with his finger on the shutter. Who had told Hoover?
Molly was already at the hotel when he got back. “They said no?” Nick said.
“No. Half-day. Orientation. They jumped at it once I said temp-no health plan.”
“Her department?”
“Well, they rotate. But I told them that’s where I’d done it before, so it should be okay. I start with ties-no sizes, even I can do it. She was doing hats today. I mean, who wears hats anymore? Everybody switches around except for the men selling suits. I suppose you really have to know about suits.”
“What was she like?”
“Nice, but not too nice. She probably thinks I’m going to be a pain. You know, who needs a trainee? But the point is, I can see her no matter where they put me. It’s all open except for the fitting rooms. So.”
“So now we wait.”
“You do.” She grinned. “I’ll be on my feet. And they’re already killing me.” She took her shoes off and lay back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. “I wonder if she’s in love with him too.”
“He’d be a little long in the tooth now, don’t you think?”
“Oh, men just keep going.” She smiled at him. “At least I hope they do.”
He sat on the bed and began rubbing her feet.
“Mm. What every working girl needs. Brown’s still not back, by the way.”
“You went out there?” Nick said.
“Well, I had the time. Just a drive-by. I was curious. There’s something going on-it doesn’t make sense.”
Nick shook his head. “We should leave the others alone. What if they spot us? We don’t want to complicate things now.”
“I don’t think anyone followed me.”
“No. Hoover said they’re not tailing us.”
“Really? What about the man outside the hotel? He wasn’t just waiting for a cab. I know he wasn’t.”
“That’s what he said. Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time he lied.”
The real waiting began in the morning. Nick stayed at the hotel, afraid he’d miss Molly’s call if he left, unable to read or think about anything else. So close. He played a game with the United Charities list, checking it against the phone book to see who was still alive, still in Washington. The others he could run through the Post obituary files, finally winnowing it down. Some names he could deal with by sight-politicians gone after failed elections, senators old even then, his parents, still together on the list. But there were too many. He might as well be doing crossword puzzles, just passing time. His father had said the reports were irregular. How was it done? Was there a prearranged signal, a call, or did he just stroll into the store, a man shopping on his lunch hour? Nick’s worst fear was that he might appear without their even knowing it, the waiting all for nothing.
The next day, too restless to stay inside, he walked over to 14th Street and circled the building to fix the likely exits in his mind. When he walked into the men’s department, Molly looked up in surprise, then cocked her head toward the blond girl folding sweaters. There were only a few customers. Nick moved slowly past the counters, browsing, familiarizing himself with the floor layout. You could see everything from the fitting rooms. He made his way to the shirt counter, where Molly was waiting, glancing at him nervously.
“Fifteen and a half, thirty-three,” he said, then stopped. Not even his size. When she reached behind her and handed him the shirt, he felt, eerily, that he had crossed some invisible line into his father’s life. Exactly the way it must have been, no one noticing. He fingered the shirt wrapped in plastic. You could slip an envelope underneath. Rosemary could take it, hand you another, ring up the sale, and carry the shirt back to the stockroom. A crime so easy no one would ever see. He realized then that Molly was staring at him, disconcerted.
“I’ll come back,” he said, embarrassed, and walked away.
After that he stayed with the list, not trusting himself to go out. He reread Rosemary’s letter, trying to imagine what her voice had been like. Throaty, maybe, like Molly’s. The hotel room was claustrophobic, so he sat for hours gazing out the window, going over everything that had happened in Prague, some clue he might have missed. He wondered what had happened to Zimmerman, what Anna Masaryk had done with the exit visas. He could see them both vividly and realized that this is what people in prison did-floated out of their cells into some imaginative other life. She had been putting lipstick on when the bellboy brought the setup. Two glasses. Happy to see him.
The phone rang twice before Nick came back to his own room.
“She asked to switch with me Friday. Tomorrow. To do the shirts,” Molly said. “I don’t know if it means anything or not. But why switch? Nick?”
“I’m here.”
“So what do you think?”
He paused, not sure.
“Well, it might be, don’t you think?” Molly said eagerly. “Why don’t you buy yourself a suit tomorrow?”
He tried on several, lingering in front of the mirror with one eye fixed on the shirt counter. Finally, when the salesman became impatient, he picked a blue pinstripe and stood on a raised platform while the tailor measured for alterations. But how long could he string it out? A few men, all of them too young, bought shirts. The blond girl, Barbara, kept looking around as if she were expecting someone, but nothing happened.
When the floor manager told her to go to lunch, Nick followed. A sandwich in a coffee shop, eaten quickly. When she went back to Garfinkel’s, Nick stopped himself at the door, his excuses to go inside exhausted. He went across the street and kept watch from a doorway. Smoking, waiting to meet a friend. Then another corner, a newspaper. The afternoon dragged on. How much longer?
He went back into the store and caught Molly’s eye. A quick shake of her head. He crossed the floor, positioning himself next to ladies’ scarves, then bought some perfume, all the while keeping the men’s department in sight. Almost closing time. Barbara looked at her watch and then toward the door. A missed connection, or just a salesgirl eager to go home?
When the bell rang, Nick’s heart sank. He’d made himself conspicuous and no one had showed. He watched her close the register with Molly, chatting, then had no choice but to follow the other customers out. He waited across the street again and then, on the chance that she was meeting him after work, moved toward the employee entrance. A group of women, talking. He picked out the blond hair easily and began to track it back toward Dupont Circle. Maybe a drink after work? But Barbara, the reliable tenant, went straight home, and when he saw her go through Mrs Baylor’s door he knew the day, with all its nervous expectations, was gone.
“But she asked to switch again,” Molly said later. “Maybe he couldn’t make it for some reason.”
“And maybe she just likes shirts,” Nick said, depressed.
“No, she never asked before. It has to be. Anyway, you could use the clothes.”
The next morning was like the first: sleepwalking past the sales tables, picking through the suits, the clerk puzzled at his being there again but still wanting to make a sale. Nick said he’d try a few on, hoping the salesman would go away, and went into one of the changing rooms. The door was louvered, so that if you bent a little you could see between the slats. Barbara at the shirt counter. But he couldn’t stay here forever, peering out. The clerk had someone else now and was leading him toward the tailor, but he’d knock in a minute, wanting to know if everything was all right. Nick thought suddenly of the station men’s room, the sick feeling as the footsteps came closer.
He was about to give up and open the door when he saw Barbara’s head rise, relieved, recognizing someone. She turned and pulled two shirts off the shelf, ready, then glanced to either side of her to see if the coast was clear as the man’s back came into view. For a second Nick didn’t breathe. The man was picking up a shirt, handing the other back to her, turning slightly as she went to the register. Nick grabbed the slats with his fingers, lightheaded, steadying himself as his stomach heaved. He’d seen the face. A shouting in his head. He opened the door.
“Ah, and how did we like the gray?” the salesman said, but Nick walked by him, one foot in front of the other, as if he were underwater. Moving toward the shirts, a hundred pictures flashing by him, rearranging themselves in place. The same face through the cubicle slats, in a slice, just like the crack at the study door. Molly watching him, her mouth open. And then he was there, behind the familiar shoulders.
“Hello, Larry,” he said.